(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electrophotographic photoconductor, a method for preparing the same, a process cartridge, and an image forming apparatus.
(ii) Related Art
Electrophotographic photoconductors help achieve high print quality and high printing rates and thus are widely used in the fields of copy machines and laser beam printers. Currently, the mainstream of the electrophotographic photoconductors used in such image forming apparatuses is those that use organic photoconductive materials which are superior to conventional electrophotographic photoconductors that use inorganic photoconductive materials such as selenium, selenium-tellurium alloy, selenium-arsenic alloy, cadmium sulfide, or the like, in terms of cost, manufacturability, and disposability.
Although a corona charging technique using a corona discharger has been used as a charging technique, a contact charging technique that generates less ozone and requires low power is increasingly put into practical use. The contact charging technique involves bringing a conductive member as a charging member into contact or in close proximity with a surface of a photoconductor and applying a voltage to the charging member to charge the surface of the photoconductor. The voltage may be applied to the charging member through a DC method by which only DC voltage is applied or through an AC superimposition method by which AC voltage is superimposed on DC voltage and applied. According to the contact charging technique, the size of the apparatus is reduced and less toxic gas such as ozone is generated. However, since direct discharge occurs at the surface of the photoconductor, deterioration and wear of the photoconductor tend to occur.
The mainstream of the transfer technique has been to directly transfer images onto paper. However, recently, use of intermediate transfer bodies has increased since the flexibility of choosing paper onto which transfer is conducted is high.